are we all just broken in the end?
by Someone aka Me
Summary: Minerva tells herself that it doesn't matter why Sirius wasn't what she thought he was. It doesn't matter that she was wrong about him. But she's too curious for her own good.


**Quidditch League** : Harpies, Practice Round, Chaser 2: Student and Teacher using optional prompts: genre: angst, word: extra, item: candle

 **Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Challenges and Assignments):** Assignment 9: Religious Education: **4:** Meditation - write about concentrating on a task.

…

Minerva opens the letter by the light of her candles on a cold November morning, and she cries for the children they once were.

She knows it is supposed to feel like a victory.

It doesn't.

It feels like a loss.

Lily and James, two of her best and brightest, and still so young. Their child an orphan, living with people to whom she would never entrust a child. The news about them had broken last night.

But now, as this morning begins to dawn, she mourns for their friends. She mourns for all those they will never get back.

She mourns for Peter Pettigrew, who never deserved to die with them, especially not when they thought the war was over.

And, despite everything, she mourns for Sirius Black, the student she had always believed in, a traitor to everything she'd thought he'd loved.

In a way, these are more surprising than the loss of Lily and James. After all, the Potters had seemed to know he was after them.

But Peter Pettigrew was not the man she expected to make a last stand, and Sirius Black was not the man she'd expected to turn on them.

She thinks about Sirius Black the last time she'd seen him, at an Order meeting that James had dared to come to.

She thinks of Sirius sitting beside James, dark heads bent together as they always had been at school, sitting in the back rows of her Transfiguration classes. She thinks about seeing him laugh and thinking she'd only ever seen his real smile when James and Remus and Peter were around. The difference between his real smile and the one just for show was astronomical.

She wonders how she missed this.

She wonders how she read him _so wrong_.

…

She tells herself she's going to let it go.

She tells herself that the war is over. That it doesn't matter why Sirius wasn't what she thought he was.

Except that in the end, she has always had the curiosity of her animagus form, and she cannot let it go.

She dons her thickest set of emerald robes, wrapping them around her like a shield from both the cold and the grief.

She takes a deep, bracing breath, holds her head high, and makes her way to Azkaban.

The air on the island bites through her robes, nips at her bones.

She wants to turn around, but that's not who she is. Instead, she pulls her spine straighter, tips her chin up, and marches forward.

The human guards give her no trouble — she thinks they may be shocked to have a visitor at all. Past them, though, the Dementors hover as close as they can, as though they can sense she does not belong here.

She shivers, wishing they allowed casting Patronuses on the island. She understands that it affords an extra layer of protection, but even with the Dementors held at a distance, she can still feel their chill.

She walks quickly to the cell in question.

She approaches the bars.

Sirius Black sits in the corner of the cell, on the stone floor, carefully braiding his hair. He doesn't look up.

His fingers move slowly through the limp strands, precise and completely fixated.

When he finishes with the small section, he moves on to the next patch of hair.

He doesn't say anything. The curve of his shoulders reeks of defeat. The slump is deeper than she's ever seen.

She has never seen Sirius Black look so still. Look so fixated on a single task.

When he reaches the left side of his face and finishes braiding there, he moves to the right side and starts slowly and methodically removing the braids. His attention never wavers.

Until eventually, she asks the one question she cannot shake.

"Why did you do it?"

And the young man in front of her laughs, but there is no humour in it. There is no joy.

His fingers do not stop moving.

He does not look up.

"That's the question, isn't it? Why would I? When I had… _everything_ to lose."

She stares at him, this broken shadow of a once bright young man, and she wonders if this is guilt or something more.

His fingers do not stop moving, but he looks up at her then. She can see the shadows in his eyes.

She remembers staring down at eleven-year-old Sirius Black and seeing joy mixed in with similar shadows.

The joy is gone now.

Only the shadows remain, deeper than they have ever been before.

"Is Harry safe?" he asks her after a long pause.

She does not understand.

Is this a ploy to get Harry's location? Or a desperately guilty man seeking reassurance that he hasn't caused the deaths of _everyone_ he once held dear?

She does not know.

Neither does she know what answers she sought here. She turns to leave.

"Professor?" he says to her back. She doesn't want to acknowledge it but… but his tone is that of the same broken little boy who came into her office and told her that he couldn't go home for the Christmas holidays.

"Yes, Mr. Black?" she says eventually. She does not turn to face him. Instead, she keeps her eyes fixed on the empty cell across from his.

For a moment, she thinks he is not going to say anything at all.

But then, in a voice so small she almost doesn't hear it, he says, "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

She takes a deep breath, and she strides away, but his words still echo in her mind.

 _What didn't he know?_

In the end, the trip does not resolve her curiosity, but she does not go back.

She cannot look at him and see the monster that killed so many, that led so many more to their deaths.

She can only look at him and see what he was — a wounded little boy just looking for a place to belong.

* * *

HSWW(C&A):

Writing Month: (1000 words)

Character Appreciation: 7. last / Disney: S3: Can You Feel The Love Tonight - Write about a moment where things change forever. / Shannon's Showcase:9. FYR Macedonia: Word: Deeper; Lyric: "Have you ever thought about it? We went too far. Now there's no way back." / Showtime: 27. The First Attack - (action) Crying . Buttons: W2: Extra / Lyric Alley: 14. And my body was bruised and I was set alight / AAA: 12. Old School - (word) Traitor / Emy's Emporium:9. Temur Khan - write about someone losing everything they have

Photography Month: 11. Monochrome Photography: Write about a person who is quite downcast or depressed.

Cooking: Onion: Action: Crying; Genre: Angst

Insane House: Relationship - Mentor and student


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